Corfe Castle is a fortification standing above the village of the same name on the Isle of Purbeck in the English county of Dorset. Built by William the Conqueror, the castle dates back to the 11thcentury and commands a gap in the Purbeck Hills on the route between Wareham and Swanage. The first phase was one of the earliest castles in England to be built using stone when the majority were built with earth and timber. Corfe Castle underwent major structural changes in the 12th and 13thcenturies.
In 1572, Corfe Castle left the Crown's control when ElizabethI sold it to Sir Christopher Hatton. Sir John Bankes bought the castle in 1635, and was the owner during the English Civil War. His wife, Lady Mary Bankes, led the defence of the castle when it was twice besieged by Parliamentarian forces. The first siege, in 1643, was unsuccessful, but by 1645 Corfe was one of the last remaining royalist strongholds in southern England and fell to a siege ending in an assault. In March that year Corfe Castle was demolished on Parliament's orders. Owned by the National Trust, the castle is open to the public and in 2010 received around 190,000visitors. It is protected as a GradeI listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Corfe Castle is a village and civil parish in the English county of Dorset. It is the site of a ruined castle of the same name. The village and castle stand over a gap in the Purbeck Hills on the route between Wareham and Swanage. The village lies in the gap below the castle, and is some eight kilometres (five miles) south-east of Wareham, and the same distance west of Swanage. Both the current main A351 roadLytchett Minster to Swanage and the Swanage Railway thread their way through the gap and the village.
The civil parish of Corfe Castle stretches across the width of the Isle of Purbeck, with coasts facing both the English Channel and Poole Harbour. It therefore includes sections of both the low-lying sandy heathland that lies to the north of the castle, and the rugged Jurassic Coast upland to the south.
History
Burial mounds around the common of Corfe Castle suggest that the area was occupied from 6000BC. The common also points to a later Celtic field system worked by the Durotriges tribe. Evidence suggests that the tribe co-existed with the Romans in a trading relationship following the Roman invasion c. 50AD.
Corfe Castle was made a borough by Queen Elizabeth I, through the influence of Sir Christopher Hatton, who had been granted the manor. The borough consisted of the town of Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purbeck, once a market town but by the 19th century little more than a village, where the main economic interests were clay and stone quarrying. In 1831, the population of the borough was approximately 960, and the town contained 156 houses.
The right to vote was exercised by all householders (resident or not) paying scot and lot; in 1816 this amounted to only 44 voters, and all but 14 of those were non-resident. The local landowners were able to exercise almost total influence. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the Bankes family (who had owned the castle since 1640) nominated the member for one of the seats and the Bond family for the other.
Barton Grange was a 16th/17th-century country house, most of which was demolished in 1931 and the remaining kitchen wing later converted to flats. The building is grade II listed.
In the 12th century the bishop granted to Taunton Priory an estate on the boundary between the parishes of Corfe and Pitminster which became known as Barton Grange, and was the Prior of Taunton's summer residence. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the estate was granted to the lawyer Humphrey Colles. A country mansion was built in the 17th century and passed down through the Colles family until inherited by Goodenough Earle. It then passed to his cousin, the artist Francis Newton, whose only daughter Josepha married Sir Frederick Cooper, a New Brunswick Baronet. Lady Cooper extensively remodelled the house in the 19th century before leaving it on her death in 1848 to Francis Wheat Newton. It was largely demolished in 1931 and the remaining buildings converted to flats in 1981.
Most jarring, however, is the encounter with an inadequate barmaid at the Bankes Arms hotel in CorfeCastle, a lachrymose and “red-eyed slatternly Irish girl” named Bridget who is homesick for the Christmases of Ireland. Mouse sniffily reports ... .
Most jarring, however, is the encounter with an inadequate barmaid at the Bankes Arms hotel in CorfeCastle, a lachrymose and “red-eyed slatternly Irish girl” named Bridget who is homesick for the Christmases of Ireland.
But, more than 900 years on, the King's Tower at CorfeCastle in Dorset is not in quite the same tip top shape ... What is known as the King's Tower at Corfe Castle has opened to the public for the first time in nearly 400 years.
James Gould, operations manager at CorfeCastle, said. “Henry I wanted Corfe Castle to be one of his most splendid royal palaces and fitted it out with the latest decoration and fashionable facilities.
A few years ago I went on a pilgrimage to West Lulworth in Dorset... “I can’t hear you, Keith.” After which we went to CorfeCastle and had a theatrical row about who got to hold the guidebook before going in search of the dungeons ... Photograph ... Share ... .
Take, for example, CorfeCastle in Dorset, England... Corfe Castle was once a formidable fortress, the seat of kings, and a symbol of immense power ... Perched high above the Neckar River, the castle was originally constructed in the 13th century.
Twenty miles in, two to go ... This last section of the walk took me through the stunning Purbeck Heaths “super” reserve ... With the backdrop of CorfeCastle and a cronking raven overhead, it was the perfect time to be out birding ... the common redstart ... .
The woman in the bakery hands me my loaf and asks if it's my first time in the village. I just smile at her, non-committal ...Studland is lower key, with National Trust beaches and hikes along the clifftop to Old Harry's Rocks or inland to CorfeCastle ... .
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